I don’t think there were really plausbile other suspects, no evidence towards Nicole doing it, other than being in the area but they said they could see her leaving the area too. Unlikely the dad leaves his baby and kid in the apartment to go murder her IMO.
also i had Jonathan down for it the whole way basically, i didn’t post it here lol but I told my BIL last night as much and I will be dunking on him shortly.
Best moment was when Hugh blamed the attorney for Kidman taking the stand and she was like “yeah well I’m not the jagoff who didn’t get rid of the hammer”
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Why didn’t he get rid of the hammer though? Makes no sense.
cuz they needed a reason for why he “lost” her. lol Yea just drop it in a fucking dumspter or down a sewer, nah lets drive across the country to the beach house and stash it in the fireplace instead of throwing it in the water or something.
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Yeah, the ole I need the plot to happen reason.
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The main guy, the husband, did it, it was pretty clear the whole way through. He pulled an OJ on last day of trial and took his son, stopped on a bridge and almost jumped off but Nicole got there by her dads helicopter and got him to climb down, dude gets arrested the end
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This, the scene on the bridge was so ridiculous it was painful.
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My lol 5 mins in was the kid putting the murder weapon in the dishwasher
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Twice!
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Excellent or at least consistent with the rest of the episodes right up until she walked out of the courtroom post testimony. Everything after that was laughably awful.
I lost it when Grace told the lawyer: “I’ve always been the most reliable narrator.”
GMAFB. I’d cringe at how on the nose it was EXCEPT IT WENT ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE. Confirmation bias is a character flaw, not a plot twist. It has nothing to do with why audiences love unreliable narrators.
They spent five episodes hammering (uhh) that the audience shouldn’t trust anyone’s take on this. Not because they’re deliberately dishonest, but because that’s the nature of this kind of story. No one has access to objective truth.
What was the point of the cops being assholes? Grace having such a scattered memory and disassociated behavior that she forgets huge chunks of time? The mother being a cruel parent ready to correct your grammer and certainly any authentic expression of emotion for your own good?
There was no point to any of that. The story gives up all of the intrigue so it can say the biggest red herring was in making you think this story would require anything but the most obvious and disappointing explanation possible.
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The first sign of good parenting the entire show.
Yea they didn’t even do a big reveal for finding out that he’s def the killer, dude just thinks back over it lol
I really liked the technique of dipping into organic memories that are provoked by the immediate situation. And they hinted maybe it would surprise us when he walked out and she attacked him…
You receive no credit and I award you no points. All of those things were my favorite parts of the show. It’s only in the last forty minutes that it became increasingly clear this was a show with excellent setups and no idea what to do with them.
I have to check out the book now. I could see this playing very differently in written form with nothing changed, but I’m secretly hoping HBO made a mistake changing the ending.
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Anyone know if the TV ending was different in the book? Mainly did Jonathan do it in the book?
Maybe it was just me, but when I was watching Grace’s entire testimony, I felt like if I was a rational juror, it wouldn’t really move the needle.
It doesn’t really change any elements of the case, and it’s kind of obvious that Grace tanked there.
I can believe that a jury would act that way, so not really annoyed with the writing, just annoyed that it would probably actually work.
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I think the worst part of the finale was how the attorney went from super star attorney to barely competent. Putting Grace on the stand was pretty dumb especially with the 911 tape (which should have been no surprise).
The the whole serial objection thing. Felt like that scene in A Few Good Men, where Demi Moore puts on a clinic on what not to do:
Moore’s character: I object
Judge: Overruled
Moore’s character: Well I strenuously object
Maybe Haley Fitzgerald needs Sam to explain to her how things work.
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What’s different: Who killed Elena.
Summary
The series poses the question: Who murdered Elena? Was it Jonathan, or someone else? The book poses no such question. It’s clear early on in the novel that Jonathan murdered Malaga/Elena, and by the end of the book he’s confessed to it in a letter to Grace. He’s also on the run for almost all of the novel, which is a nod to his guilt. (At the very end, he’s captured abroad and extradited back to the United States.) The book essentially culminates in the conclusion that Jonathan is a sociopath.
The series, however, takes a very different approach, hinting that Jonathan may be innocent. It points fingers at Elena’s husband, Fernando Alves (Ismael Cruz Córdova), who is a much bigger character than he is in the novel—and later, the series hints that Grace or Henry could be responsible. This is not the case in the novel: Fernando is only mentioned when detectives tell Grace that he has a rock-solid alibi for the night of his wife’s murder—and because the novel is told from Grace’s perspective, it’s clear that she isn’t the killer. Nobody ever suspects Henry to be the culprit.
Another character that simply doesn’t exist in the book is defense attorney Haley Fitzgerald (Noma Dumezweni). The Jonathan of the book has no defense attorney, because there’s no trial, because Jonathan is fleeing capture until the very end of the book.